Medan is a city of many layers. What began as a small village grew into the tobacco frontier of Deli, then into a plantation capital that drew people from across the world. Europeans, Chinese, Javanese, Indians, and countless others left their mark here, shaping the streets, buildings, and communities that gave the city its distinctive character. Yet this history was not only one of growth and glory; it was also a history of hardship, as colonial expansion and an extractive plantation economy brought immense suffering to many.

In the 1860s, the Deli Maatschappij was founded, and by 1871 its headquarters moved to Medan Poetri, laying the foundations of a colonial. Built on the backs of indentured labourers working under harsh conditions, Medan rapidly expanded with tobacco wealth by the 1890s, when the Sultan of Deli relocated his palace there. Around the Esplanade, distinct quarters emerged—European, Chinese, Malay, and Indian.

This pictorial book traces that story through photographs spanning from the 1870s to the 1950s. The earliest images capture Medan at its inception: kampongs by the rivers, tobacco plantations, and the first European buildings. As the decades unfold, the photographs reveal the expansion of infrastructure, railways, markets, and civic institutions, alongside new neighbourhoods shaped by migrant communities. By the mid-twentieth century, the images record a city in transition: still bound to plantations of tobacco, rubber, and palm oil, but also marked by schools, hospitals, cinemas, and bustling streets where new generations forged their lives.

These photographs do more than record buildings and streets; they reveal the rhythms of everyday life. They show workers in the fields, merchants in busy markets, children in kampongs, and civic leaders in ceremonial dress. They remind us that Medan has never been a single story, but a mosaic of experiences, of prosperity and oppression, of ambition and resilience, of wealth for a few and toil for the many.

In presenting this visual history, the aim is not only to preserve the memory of a city, but also to reflect on the legacies that remain visible today. The past is not a distant country; it lives on in the streets we walk, the buildings we pass, and the stories we inherit.

We hope that these photographs, will allow readers to see Medan anew: as a city at once local and global, rooted in history yet always in motion.